stomperspc

I think it’s a slippery slope. Misawa, Kobashi, Austin, Mysterio, Eddie Guerrero, Benoit and plenty of others could have extended their careers had they adjusted their physical ring style at some point. Do all of those guys get penalized? Do some get more penalized than others? What’s the criteria? As others have said, I am also not sure why it would matter if the quality of the work is still high. We are judging how good wrestlers were the ring by examining their bodies of work. If the work is good, it is good. When we start getting into intent and hypotheticals, an already subjective exercise becomes really subjective and muddy. I’d rather stick to the output and not get into whether a certain wrestler could have theoretically been better off by doing something differently. If Bryan has to retire now, there is definitely a discussion about whether his early retirement would hurt his overall resume (since he wouldn’t have the longevity that others have) but that feels like a different topic.

I feel (back) asleep before the main event so haven't watched that particular match yet, but I completely agree with the bolded in general. It is one thing if guys are going to have slug fests with little selling and lots of strikes when the strikes look great. Makabe's strikes don't most of the time. Goto tends to be the same way. When Ishii peppers forearms or elbows back and forth in rapid fire they can look weak, although in general he is a better striker than those two. I'm not sure what some people are watching sometimes when they talk about the great striking in these matches because I often don't see it. Like you said, if you are going to throw forearms and work an "I'm tougher than you match", the forearms better look really good. Otherwise, guys are just no-selling each other's weak looking stuff and what's the point in that?

Liger vs. Anthony for the NWA Junior title was fine. Usual current Liger singles match with all of his signature stuff after short mat work to start things out. Anthony was competent or maybe a little more than that, but his performance did not exactly stand out. A little surprised he retained.

Jay White has some of the best forearm strikes in the promotion. They always look good. All of his offense has a natural intensity to it, almost Benoit-like. I also liked the opener. It was straight-forward and everyone had a role.

Yea, the whole thing could have been planned out better including when they held the tournament. I get that they are trying to load up this week to get the free April subscribers to stay on, but putting the tournament on next week or better yet, having it run multiple Tuesdays beginning with tonight would have forced free subscribers to re-up if they wanted to see the King of the Ring show(s). Instead it was announced, 1st round matches were placed randomly on RAW, and there was no time for anyone to get excited about the semi's and final. Doing something like two 1st round matches on RAW to introduce the tournament, two more tonight, semi's next week, and finals the week after would have let everything breathe more. It also would have allowed them to give more time to all of the matches.

Liked the main event. Nice focus point with the rib/back work. Neville's selling and comebacks were strong as was most of Barrett's offense. Loved the Bobby Eaton slingshot backbreaker. Some good near falls and a well timed finish.

In addition to Ultimo Dragon, Gran Hamada and Taka Michinoku have done all three, although both fall short of Hall of Fame level in at least one of the categories.

The NOAH team seems about right. Takayama will be interesting in AAA because he is something different (from a physical and wrestling standpoint). Ishimori and Kotoge fit the speedy, high flying bill and should mesh in with the style. AJPW team is odd at quick glance but the core AAA audience is isn't going to know who Kento Miyahara or whoever else is, so you might as well at least send the mask wearing guy who was trained by Lizmark (Masamune). KENSO is known for his time in AAA (and WWE). Sending Kanemoto under the Tiger Mask gimmick makes sense for the obvious reasons. Sending big name NOAH and AAA guys aren't necessarily going to help the draw so why bother? I'm also guessing that AAA won't have much of an issue with that team losing like they would if they sent other guys. I'd expect the ROH team to be halfway decent and Matt Hardy is a good start for the TNA team. They will have nice variety among the 24 participants which I guess it the aim for a "world" tournament like this one.

Yea, good for him to get out sooner rather than later. The ROH series versus Bryan was legitimately great stuff from both a booking and match standpoint. The way the feud escalated match by match in both a logical and unique manner and the intensity both guys brought made the entire feud one of the best ROH has ever done. Morishima never reached his full potential in NOAH but he had a good ROH run capped off by that feud.

I don't listen to anything Dave has to say about Lucha. He loves to toss out incorrect assumptions, and in general seems to have little idea of Lucha history or how things in Lucha actually get over. I think Dave has a solid sense of lucha history, it just has never really been his thing and he's only gotten into it heavily a few times. His Lucha Libre for Beginners article from the 1990 Observer year book provides solid insight to his views on lucha and his knowledge of Mexican wrestling history. It's an interesting read in that more or less on his own, he pieces together how matches in Mexico are structured, how feuds are structured, ect. He also does it in a way that would be easy for lucha novices to understand. At the same time, you can see his biases come through on the stylistic elements. He refers to the brawling as "weak" relative US and Japan. He also wrote that that the wrestlers aren't as complete as wrestlers in top promotions in the US & Japan and compares the talent level to the US indies which obviously seems unfair. If anything, 1990 Dave seemed to be harsher against the luchadores he viewed as being mainly fliers (Atlantis, Super Astro) while praising guys he felt were more well-rounded like Casas, Pirata Morgan, Jerry Estrada, Dandy, ect. I think over the years, Dave has shifted more and more heavily towards athleticism at the expense of most everything else which has impacted his views on lucha and everything else. Agreed that his match opinions on lucha should be taken with a grain of salt these days, but the same could be said for his match opinions on any promotion/style that he only occasionally watches. He's not alone in that of course. A lot of people watch a match or two from a certain promotion or style and form an opinion on it without the proper context. It's just that Dave's opinions are far more visible than most other's.

That's my all time favorite. It was on a Ric Flair comp set we got when we started buying tapes and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Great, simple hype video.

For a match that wraps up in under 10 minutes, there is a lot do it. Funaki is wrestling his fourth match for UWF 2.0 and already has losses to Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Yoji Anjo, plus a DQ loss to Bob Backlund on his record sheet. Nakano came up through the original UWF and while by no means a star, is positioned as both the veteran and fan favorite against Funaki. There is very much an “our guy” versus “this other guy we are unsure about” vibe from the fans throughout. The match has excellent heat form the start. Just that total anticipatory shouting and yelling type of heat. Hakata Star Lane only holds a few thousand fans (and it shows) but man, those fans made a lot of noise. An awesome big fight atmosphere that is made even more remarkable by the fact that these fans just sat through a 30 minute draw between Mark Rush & Minoru Suzuki. You would never know that this match was coming of the heels of a 30 minute draw and was positioned second on a five match card by the crowd reaction. They take advantage of that anticipation by going at it right away and cutting a remarkable pace. This is a brawl in every way possible. They throw hard kicks and slaps in a reckless but still skilled manner. There is almost no separation between the two wrestlers, save for few times the times when one is trying to answer a ten count and a couple of timeouts for the doctor to check on Nakano. The doctor looks at Nakano because he gets a busted up and has his nose bloodied early. The blood adds another dimension to the match and heat, as blood tends to do. Nakano and Funaki had a better pro wrestling brawl by staying in the ring and not using any weapons than most guys who lean on those gimmicks do. The mat work is overall very good. They were able to take the intensity from the standup stuff and transition it the ground, which is not always easily done. There was a real struggle and stiffness to the mat portions of the match, with both guys constantly in motion trying to counter and escape. There are shoot style matches that have higher level submission attempts and escapes, but given the intensity they were wrestling with it didn’t make an ounce of difference. They fell into the somewhat common shoot style trap of getting tied in dual leg locks, but got out of it quickly without losing any of the momentum they had built. In fact, they only gained crowd momentum as the match wore on. As hot as the crowd was at the start, they only got louder in throwing their support behind Nakano. One the blood starting flowing, the crowd threw all their weight behind Nakano by chanting his name and screaming during his comebacks. Nakano lifting his fist towards the crowd after the doctor decides that the match can continue was a great moment and only served to get the crowd even more behind him. Funaki jumped right back on top him after that. Funaki never allowing Nakano to gain much space was a big factor in the match working as well as it did. Nakano’s low-to-the-mat suplexes are great. I loved how he teased one signature snap suplex only for Funaki to half-block it in this really realistic manner. Funaki didn’t just put on the breaks or get on a knee like you would normally see. Rather, it came off like he was holding his weight back as much as he possibly could, but still ended up being driven halfway into the mat on his head. When Nakano pulled off the same suplex cleanly later in the match, it got a big reaction. I could see the argument that they could have used a couple more high level near-submissions for Nakano near the end, but the ones they had felt like more than enough. It would have been difficult for them to draw more heat for a near-victory than what they were already drawing. The finish felt like it came at just the right time, plus Nakano milked it just long enough before giving up that it had time to sink in. It is a cliché, but this was one of those matches where both winner and loser came out looking strong. My first thoughts after watching this was “that’s what some people think Ishii matches are” and “that’s what Ishii matches should be.” I am not picking on Ishii or at least I don’t intend to. But this was a hard hitting, super intense brawl of a match that never let up and got there without burning through a bunch of stuff or going long. I read a lot of people talk up matches from Ishii, Sekimoto and the like because they gravitate towards matches where two guys take a lot of punishment and go down swinging. That is fine, but matches like this are an example of how that can be done without resorting to no-selling, burning through moves, or going long. A match like this is potentially appealing to a far wider offense because it doesn’t do those things, while keeping the positive elements (drama, intensity, the feeling of a throw down brawl) of an Ishii-type bomb fest. Awesome match overall and probably one of my favorite sub-10 minute matches of all time. It is quick, heated, and hits almost all of the right notes. http://www.crossarmbreaker.com/masakatsu-funaki-vs-tatsuo-nakano-uwf-2-0-07241989/#more-3100

March Match Guide is up: http://www.crossarmbreaker.com/2015-match-guides/march-2015-match-guide/

I like Arik Royal. I hope this is the start of him getting a few more bookings outside of CWF Mid-Atlantic. For a guy that has been wrestling for 6 years, he isn't all that polished and can be a tad sloppy at times. There are at least a few glimpses of strong potential in every match of his I watch. He's one of those wrestlers where if you clipped his matches into a few minutes of highlights, they would look pretty good which is a start.

Yep, March will be out by the end of the weekend. Thanks for reading!

I only watched the first half last night, but Young Bucks vs. Romero/Barretta was a lot better than I expected. More southern tag in nature than a lot of Young Buck matches. My favorite match from the first half of show.

Enjoyed Sheamus/Bryan quite a bit. Really stiff and a different than normal flow to the match. Sheamus comes off much better as a heel. More blood at the end and I don't think it was accidental. Bryan seemed to land hands first on the outside but came up with a bloody forehead anyway. They didn't cut away or go black & white.

There have been many wrestlers who have gotten over because they did one or two things really well. There have been wrestlers who haven’t gotten over without doing anything particularly well just because of the way they were booked! A wrestler with extraordinary athleticism who can harness that athleticism in a positive manner in the ring can be valuable to a promotion and can get over even if he has nothing else going for him. A wrestler with a great sense of psychology and storytelling can get over big even if he is a subpar athlete, so long as he uses his strengths to make up for his weaknesses. I don’t think one aspect is more important than the other. My guess would be the greatest wrestlers generally are strong on multiple fronts. There are definitely some guys that made it because they were really, really good at one or two things, but I’d imagine they are the exceptions. I guess we will get a clearer picture once the GWE poll is complete, but that’s my sense. In the end, there are a bunch of tools/attributes. A wrestler can mix & match them any number of ways and find success.

WWE backs themselves into a corner with the TLC and HIAC shows. Those gimmicks should be used when a feud naturally builds up to them and not pigeonholed into a certain month. There are times a feud could use a HIAC blow off but it doesn’t get one because the timing doesn’t fit in within the HIAC show. Same could probably be said for Extreme Rules and Elimination Chamber. Survivor Series would have value in its original form and is the kind of gimmick show they should be doing with the network now. There is not the same pressure there once was to have big singles or title matches every show. A break from the normal format every November would feel fresh. Survivor Series doesn’t have the same issues that TLC and HIAC do because the gimmick is relatively mundane. If an even in February, July, or September calls for a 10-man tag, I am not sure it hurts the specialness of Survivor Series the way running a HIAC match in August would hurt the HIAC show. The matches are also relatively easy to set up if they did 5 matches on a card, they could get 50+ wrestlers on the show which would also be something different from the norm. They could get creative and do an NXT match, a woman’s match, a tag teams match, ect. They certainly have the roster to pull it off now. I think gimmick shows are fine if there are 2-3 a year tops and the gimmick isn’t a match designed to blow off a feud. MITB over the summer, Survivor Series in the fall, and Royal Rumble in the winter would be a good schedule.

I agree, although I am not entirely sure who those possible opponents are in the short-term. Cesaro is tied up in the tag division. Cena and Rusev are possibilities after April, but Rusev will probably need a win by then and Cena/Reigns should be kept apart until a big show (WrestleMania probably). Bryan is a possibility in the future but it seems too soon for that. Who does that leave? Ambrose? Harper?

Rusev works plenty stiff. Watch the slow motion of the of the knee to Cena's jaw on Sunday. His spin kick almost always makes solid contact which is more than could be generally said for that move. One of the last things I think about when watching a Rusev match is "he works too light". The last sentence of the first paragraph is a big part of what is wrong with WWE booking. They should be playing to a wrestler's strengths and trying to get them over, not setting them up for failure or indifference and putting the onus entirely on the the wrestler to make himself. What wrestler in the past ten years has WWE done even-steven booking with who has risen out of that to get over big as a heel? It generally does not work and if it doesn't work Rusev, it won't be because Rusev couldn't cut it. Rusev is as good of an all around wrestler in terms of in-ring work, character, and and getting over as a heel as WWE has had come up in quite some time. He has a lot of value. Just because he is not Riki Choshu doesn't mean he isn't a good wrestler or shouldn't continue to pushed/protected.

I am not 100% sure that Reigns would have been in a worse position had he lost to Brock cleanly (after all of those kick outs) than he is having lost to Rollins after the cash in. At best, the difference seems insignificant. I agree that Rollins needed to end up with the title. I think something like Brock beats Rollins, Brock is really hurt himself, and Rollins cashes in immediately would have accomplished the same thing without changing the match into a 3-way at the end. Maybe I am wrong and that scenario would have had both Brock and Rollins come out looking weaker than they did, but I don't see it. Even if that was their only choice after the corner they booked themselves into, that still doesn't change the fact that they booked themselves in a corner. Maybe that's right and that was the best decision for an ending at that point, but that doesn't mean the ending still wasn't "bad" on some level. The best answer is not always a great answer.

Awesome match, but I hated the finish. I am not usually ultra-critical of logic gaps in the booking but that one really took me out of it. I don't see how Rollins cashing in his MITB contract turns the match into a 3-way where he can pin Reigns to win the title. Shouldn't it basically turn the match into a 2 on 1 title match where Rollins and Reigns can't pin each other? Totally took me out of it. I think it Rollins pinned Brock, it would have worked for me more. Brock would have the same "out" that Reigns does now only everything else would have tied together better. I still would have ideally liked to have seen a finish to what Reigns/Lesnar had built to that point, but Rollins pinning Brock would have been slightly better than what they did.

I don't think Thatcher losing was a big deal but like you said they seemed to be building to a different finish so the end fell flat. It seems like they wanted to protect Thatcher which is fine, but maybe a short match with Thornstowe catching Thatcher by surprise early would have been the better way to go. The way the match was structured and the finish did no favors for anyone. I liked Mack vs. Cobb. Better build than Thatcher/Thornstowe and a more satisfying finish. Obviously not the finals people were hoping for but I think Mack has looked as good as anyone in the tournament so far .

Strong quarterfinals. I think all four matches were as good or better as anything from the first night, as it should be. Cobb/Cage was good. Cage's more annoying tendencies were downplayed. Thatcher/Massaro was a lot of fun, particularly the mat work. Third match was the weakest of the quarters but nothing bad. Like Willie Mack/Rey Horus a lot. Horus had a few really nice dives and Mack was a good base. Think Mack/Horus was probably my favorite of the quarterfinals.